The Paper is a Chinese digital newspaper owned and run by the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group.
History
The Paper was launched in July 2014 as an offshoot of the Shanghai United Media Group publication Oriental Morning Post. It received a large amount of initial funding, speculated to be anywhere from US$16 million to 64 million.[1] Of this, RMB 100 million (approximately $) was provided by the government through the Cyberspace Administration of China.
The Paper was founded as an attempt to capture the readership of mobile internet users as revenue from mainstream physical papers across China saw major declines in the early 2010s.[2]
In May 2016, The Paper launched Sixth Tone, an English-language sister publication.[3] On 28 December 2016, six completely state-owned or invested firms in Shanghai executed a strategic equity investment in Shanghai Oriental Newspaper Industry Company Limited, the operator of The Paper, amounting to a total capital increase of 610 million yuan.